05 January 2010

Even in parts of Manhattan parents buy condos in areas with a known "good" public school, and soon overwhelm the school. Now the school board is building more schools to handle all the kids:

...The building boom of the past half-dozen years has reshaped Tribeca, adding residential high-rises where once there were almost none, leading to an explosion of school-age kids. There's 200 Chambers Street, for example, a newer 30-story and 258-unit building located in the same complex as P.S. 234. Across the street from P.S. 234 is 101 Warren Street, another new 35-story building with 228 units. Both condo complexes pamper residents with hotel-like services.... Both have been advertised as "zoned for PS 234."

For upper-middle-class parents, the anxiety isn't manufactured, particularly in this economy. High-paying jobs are less secure — or, in some cases, gone — and private schools are more difficult to pull off. Tuition continues to rise despite the recession, and competition for the spots is ferocious. Many Tribeca residents who are wealthy on paper feel squeezed and more reliant than ever on quality public education, raising the stakes. "One reason we moved here was for 234,"...

So the city wants some students to attend P.S. 89, "a very good" school, as Department of Education official Rose puts it. (The city is also constructing two new elementary schools nearby, one close to Battery Park and the other closer to the Seaport.) ...

2 comments:

We lived in a relatively nice, but not fancy, doorman building on the upper east side. I remember listening to one of our neighbors whining (in her 'can you believe this?' tone) about how their son, who was just starting at Columbia, didn't qualify for financial aid. Meanwhile, she and her husband - a lawyer and financial something-or-other - had bought a studio, a 1BR, and a 2 BR and combined them into an apt worth $2+million, kept a $40K car in a garage next door for about $1K per month, and had a weekend house in the Berkeshires.

I liked a lot of things about (stereotypical) NYers (e.g., directness) but their distorted view of reality was not one of them. I used to tell my friends in NYC that as much as I think every Ohioan should live somewhere else for a period of time in order to better understand our country, so should every New Yorker.

Believe it or not in my state of NJ there is talk of asking teachers in good school districts to work in bad ones. Of course they want to attract them with more pay. Wouldn't it make more sense to weed out the bad teachers in these districts and replace them with people that are motivated to perform.